


Fog

by Merrinpippy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27460714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merrinpippy/pseuds/Merrinpippy
Summary: Loving Tom is an addiction. Harry cannot survive without him, simply because he is only truly alive in the brief moments they are together.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 4
Kudos: 84





	Fog

Loving him is an addiction. Harry knows this intimately yet cannot bring himself to stop.

It must be some kind of dark magic. It must be. He thinks often of the diary all that time ago, and how it had sucked life from Ginny until she was all but lifeless on the wet stone of the Chamber of Secrets. He feels that same lifelessness now as he ambles through living, and wonders, truly, what would happen to him if he just  — stopped giving in? 

But he won’t. He can’t. 

He can barely find in himself emotion, and when he finds it it is explosive and angry and drives everyone away, whispering about teen angst or Voldemort underneath his skin. But even that is preferable to what he feels usually, and that is a gaping hole where everything he thinks he should feel is supposed to be. In short, he feels nothing.

_ Except. _

Except when Tom is there. 

Except in a meeting of the eyes from across the room, a breath on the back of his neck when he thought he was alone, the rough slide of a fingertip on the back of his hand. It breaks through the perpetual fog he’s mired in, and for split seconds at a time he can find clarity enough to focus on  _ him.  _

It wasn’t always like this. 

There was a time when Harry had been, if not great,  _ okay _ . But then Cedric had… had been murdered in front of him, and… the world got greyer. It became harder to focus on more than one thing at a time. And, crucially, he’d started to see Voldemort everywhere. In the mirror, in a crowd, in his dreams at night. The distraction made him paranoid, jumpy. He’d stopped eating, Dudley’s continuing diet plan for once not affecting him, and the hot days trudged wearily on while Harry waited, heart in his throat, for a break in the endlessness that seemed to never come.

When he was rescued and brought to 12 Grimmauld Place, nothing changed. He was, if possible, lonelier than ever, despite his friends being right there next to him. He continued to see Voldemort everywhere he went, and it was steadily ruining him. 

And then… it stopped. And instead of Voldemort, there was Tom instead, clearing away the awfulness whenever he appeared. He considered saying something about it to Sirius or Dumbledore or his friends, but that hadn’t helped him so far. So he stayed quiet, waiting for Tom’s appearances, scant as they were. 

They’re not so scant anymore, to Harry’s great relief. And he knows it’s weak of him, of course he does. That he should resist the pull he feels to this boy, only slightly older than him by appearance, who he knows grows up to become Harry’s worst enemy. But he isn’t right now. 

Tom, when he appears, is cold, detached from the world. It’s like he doesn’t even see his surroundings. He only sees Harry. His gaze is intense, entrancing. It pierces the fatigue Harry is trudging through constantly. He rarely smiles, unless Harry’s had a particularly bad day at Hogwarts. That happens a lot more frequently now, what with Umbridge forcing him to scar himself for her amusement in their detentions. When Tom smiles, Harry can relax. It feels like permission.

Tom didn’t used to approach him, but as time passed the barriers between them grew nonexistent. Or at least, Harry thinks time has passed. It’s hard to tell, when he’s surrounded by constant nothingness at all times. The changing of the seasons doesn’t affect him anymore; it all feels cold and brittle no matter how many layers he folds himself in. Gloves don’t warm his hands. Only Tom can do that, by taking one in his own hands and pressing a kiss to Harry’s palm. 

Or, on that especially rare occasion, pressing a kiss to Harry’s lips instead. Harry chases these in particular, for the burn of firewhiskey has nothing on how it scorches him from the inside out, letting him feel cleansed, letting him feel  _ at all.  _ And he gasps, as if to take more of Tom in that he already has, and Tom’s eyes crinkle as if to laugh at him before relenting again. 

Tom doesn’t speak to him, because words don’t get through. Words are going through the motions, words don’t mean anything. He speaks to Ron and Hermione every day, but it doesn’t matter, it can’t matter. Tom speaks in touches, in glances, in rolls of the eyes and raisings of the eyebrows. In grittings of the teeth when Harry is hurt. And Harry always understands. 

He is addicted to Tom in this way. He cannot survive without him, simply because he is only truly alive in the brief moments they are together. 

_ Is  _ it the same dark magic that nearly cost Ginny her life in his second year at Hogwarts? Is this just another facet of Voldemort’s past coming to life again through him? Harry can no longer focus enough to follow the line of logic through to its conclusion, let alone consider what he should do about it. It takes most of his strength to get through a day doing the bare minimum, and he’s pretty sure there’s not a single person who hasn’t noticed him being out-of-sorts. Well, he is. 

There is only one antidote, who comes to him in the small moments of the day to let him breathe, to wake him up from this so-called ‘life’ for just a while. 

Today when Tom comes to him, there is no touch to start. Harry’s in the Gryffindor boys’ dorm. He double-checks the truth of this statement with a flicker of the eyes away from Tom to the drapery of the four-poster bed and back, and in that millisecond feels his soul turn to the thinnest paper before springing back into fullness when he catches Tom’s gaze once more. He wonders if this is hell, but can’t think enough beyond  _ Tom  _ to come up with an answer. 

The edge of Tom’s mouth twitches. Up or down Harry cannot say. 

And then comes a gesture that Harry has not seen before; a crook of the finger,  _ come hither.  _ A beckoning. Harry stares, questioning. Tom keeps eye contact but remains still, and Harry is surprised, finds it within himself to be surprised, which is in itself a novelty. 

Tom never stays for long, so Harry knows their time is limited. It is usually Tom who makes the first move  — is usually Tom who makes the only move at all, but this is different. A crook of the finger. Come hither. The keeping of eye contact helps Harry to feel the the slow pulse of blood moving within his veins, allows Harry to feel alive and in control of himself for once. It allows him to move. 

A crook of the finger. Come hither. 

For the first time in so long, Harry moves of his own volition, cutting through the blinding fog between them to reach Tom’s side and take his hand, electricity racing through his fingers and up his arm as he does. It almost feels cheap. But nothing can be worse than the empty nothing he lives in, after all. 

If it wasn’t this, if they weren’t them, then Harry thinks this would warrant… a conversation of some sort. A question and an answer. A conclusion. But there isn’t enough left of himself to uphold that, and Tom has always understood this about him. So instead, Tom begins to move, guiding him… somewhere he can’t see yet. But he goes willingly, each step becoming easier for him to take, and he thinks this all-encompassing static must be love, right? 

Tom squeezes his hand.


End file.
